Automatic Extraction of Surface Dynamics Using Google Earth Engine for Understanding Drought Phenomenon

Abstract

Abstract. Atmospheric drought due to meteorological events occurring out of seasonal norms, and consequent droughts in agriculture and wetlands cause great damage to the ecological balance. The initial effects of this situation appear on a local scale, while the aftereffects, which last for years, appear on a global scale. Monitoring and detecting drought with remote sensing technologies can contribute to the management of water resources and forest areas and enable many measures to be taken to reduce the effects of drought. Within the scope of this study, a system that automatically performs the extraction of different drought parameters depending on years has been developed. Işıklı Lake was selected as the study area and the change of water areas over the years has been extracted from satellite images. With the system developed on the Google Earth Engine platform, different parameters were analyzed over a 13-year period and their consistency was tested. As a result, it is seen that the water areas in the lake decreased by 30% between 2010 and 2022. Likewise, the systematic decrease in the parameters, especially in 2015 and afterward, indicates the drought in the region. With the proposed automatic system, it is thought that early precautions can be taken for drought scenarios that may occur in larger-scale regions.